h or such internationally offensive action, it is invariably taken for granted that the governments in question have sufficient control over their subjects to ensure their submission to the stipulated restraint. No account is taken of the wide differences that exist among governments in this respect, some of them clearly having no power, or very little, to guarantee the compliance of their subjects with any conditions that happen to prove unpopular. All the schemes for a league of nations so far put forward resemble one another at this point -- that is to say, they charge the contracting states with obligations in respect of their own subjects which only a powerful and firmly established government could carry out, and which would obviously be worthless if undertaken by a weak one. Ignoring the fact that certain governments can hardly be said to 'govern' at all, being mere temporary committees for the transaction of national business, existing on sufferance, and holding their position by a highly precarious tenure -- ignoring all this, the assumption is made that all governments are competent, and equally competent, to compel their own subjects to keep promises made on their behalf.
             One cannot refrain from astonishment at the uncritical assurance of otherwise careful publicists in regard to this matter, and at the light-hearted manner in which weak and subservient forms of government, half their power expended in clinging to power, with the fear of the polls constantly before them, and the knowledge that a single unpopular measure would involve them in downfall, are pictured in these paper schemes as fully able to pledge their nationals to the surrender of their special privileges in the way of trade, and of their promising ambitions in the way of conquest. After reading a catalogue of the responsibilities each 'State' is required to assume for the control of its own subjects, -- of the ports they are to keep open, of the facilities t...